creative process of the world
in lovely and beautiful forms should be crowned with immortality, while
those which come out misshapen, those whose minds are not suited to a
purer and happier state of existence, should perish and be condemned to
mix again with their original clay. Eternal condemnation of this kind
may be considered as a species of eternal punishment, and it is not
wonderful that it should be represented, sometimes, under images of
suffering. But life and death, salvation and destruction, are more
frequently opposed to each other in the New Testament than happiness
and misery. The Supreme Being would appear to us in a very different
view if we were to consider him as pursuing the creatures that had
offended him with eternal hate and torture, instead of merely
condemning to their original insensibility those beings that, by the
operation of general laws, had not been formed with qualities suited to
a purer state of happiness.

Life is, generally speaking, a blessing independent of a future state.
It is a gift which the vicious would not always be ready to throw away,
even if they had no fear of death. The partial pain, therefore, that is
inflicted by the supreme Creator, while he is forming numberless beings
to a capacity of the highest enjoyments, is but as the dust of the
balance in comparison of the happiness that is communicated, and we
have every reason to think that there is no more evil in the world than
what is absolutely necessary as one of the ingredients in the mighty
process.

The striking necessity of general laws for the formation of intellect
will not in any respect be contradicted by one or two exceptions, and
these evidently not intended for partial purposes, but calculated to
operate upon a great part of mankind, and through many ages. Upon the
idea that I have given of the formation of mind, the infringement of
the general law of nature, by a divine revelation, will appear in the
light of the immediate hand of God mixing new ingredients in the mighty
mass, suited to the particular state of the process, and calculated to
give rise to a new and powerful train of impressions, tending to
purify, exalt, and improve the human mind. The miracles that
accompanied these revelations when they had once excited the attention
of mankind, and rendered it a matter of most interesting discussion,
whether the doctrine was from God or man, had performed their part, had
answered the purpose of the Creator